I can't figure out Anthologies. So I'll just keep this thread up here. Have some poetry!
carnival
the water at the foot of the pier
warps cold and desperate as depression glass,
and we watch snatched fishing boats
with sails loose and buttonless as summertime clothes
from the top of the ferris wheel, whose gondolas
rock gently. we are cycled,
like a gene – your hand recesses
into mine, and the midway gamesmen below
reset their milkbottles.
lower table rock
we hike the lower table rock,
hill scalped by glacier, belljar of ice
sweeping across the valley like the hand
of a conqueror across a field map.
little purple bulbed flowers are smuggled along
the trail, petals curling like inner ears,
the madrones are red-skinned ulnas,
drying their washery of leaves.
passover of clouds – quiet, rumbling, like sea-noise
from a conch's slip. it is late may, and it is just
hot enough that the first layers of clothing come off, and
insects joybuzz in the tallgrass, embouchure
of summertime. you notice cat's ear lilies, gray as chapel bells –
they are the strangest blossoms that grow in size
as we hike further up.
this was
holy ground once for the modocs, this
natural table-land. I imagine braves and squaws
on a pilgrimage up the rockside, pushing past
ovulating poppies, faces painted
with the braille and morse of simple afternoon ceremony,
moccasins shushing, throat-singing
like moonshine jugs.
we get to the top, and the uphill breaks into
a refrain of meadow and field. despite the lack of shade
it is instantly cool, and goshawks hand-peel the cerulean. in the grass,
yellow-bracketed spiders weave like penelope before her suitors
and there are piles of pumice rocks – cairns for the fallen old crow
indianfolk. here, a battle took place – guns splitting,
ponies unshod, thunder rolling caisons
and the modocs pushed further and further
toward the edge of these table rocks
where they would topple into the lap-quilts
of ranch and farm.
the late spring blossoms leap in color,
like salmon upstream.
national geographic
there is a spread of the clay-breasted aborginees,
the women with heels cracked like china put away –
flat-nosed, the men skinny, prairie-bound and dancing
before vain bonfires that lick and preen, whose flames tuft
and flutter like clusters of overwintering monarch butterflies.
I turn the page – a volcano erupts in asia. volcanoes
are always erupting where there are people, cities
drawn to the foot of the phrenetic mountains like disciples.
the earth cracks, motherveins of lava clot wax
across the envelopes of earth. there is a picture
of a bed of fresh obsidian in undulant, dark tetnus,
bored with tubules, like a typist's wrists.
an interview with a paleontologist – his bedchamber of bones,
jurassic ribcages cupped into beachwood, tibiae
scribed with the worn paths of utah sand and insect,
sloped skulls of neolithic man – nightjars for dreams of
moon-tusked mastadons. in his picture, the man grins
and holds up a fluted ossic fragment like a witch doctor
of the academe –
the copy is dog-eared, finger-browned, the pictures
distinctively aged. grandpa was a lifetime member and
the yellow-spined journals are packed into shelves. I wonder
if he ever read through all of them, dreaming of the teutons, considering
the poppies of afghanistan, swept up like wind-socks. I wonder
how often he dreamed about seeing the places he read about, about
sketching the olmec heads, about running his fingers over
a scalped egyptian hieroglyph as a priest might
over the eyes of the deceased.
Points:
Time spent:
Canary word: Present
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125,018 Literary Works • 672,861 Reviews
dialysis
river easing into the hills
like a sunday drive
and we stood thigh deep in the water
with fishing lines, flies tied like
blood truces and the water heavy
with marsupial ripples. the steelhead
tripping upstream were voices in a storm and
it was spring
we watched the water, thin
scooping wrist bones, silent bangles, as it caught
rims of light and slipped them against the shore,
mutely kneaded for warmth and color
as a hand held in hospital. you told me
that we could never visit the same
river twice.
emptying
through the meadow
that we would camp in, with its
poppies like nextdoor gunshots.
and at dawn, the long-term
memory of mist through roots.
as we gutted bright fish – slow coughed fumble
of viscera – you sweated
like a summer night with the windows open.
snug currents
wrung through stones – i remember
that a river is not repeated
like blood is,
or apologies.
this makes these afternoons
less difficult.
danse des mères
her dance
is a ribbon tugged
from undone hair.
she is merely practicing
on an empty stage. it is how
she laces up her flats, the tight
salt rhythms of tied knots, solar
flare of her hands – she knows
these knots by heart so she
doesn’t think about them,
as people don't think
about pillars, caryatids.
the music – the slow uncurling seashell
of the first violin note,
and then the piccolo notes that she will tuck
behind her ear, the cello voice
like wordlessness between settled people.
with every movement
she is casting something off –
this great molting, unpeeling her skin
as if it were a sunset, bones worn
down like hot months. until you can see
each the tidal pull of every muscle. how is it that
she can unravel herself so,
and bind me up – this danced tourniquet
until I can barely breathe
these small practice dances,
where
she ties the world down, quiet knots
against the expanding universe
with her
own spun yarn.
pottery
larynx of clay,
proto-minoan, shaped
under hands and lengthening
in the sun like a growing thirst.
somehow it is still pertinent
to ask how to hold water,
even as the blossom trees lose
their spools of petals through the
cracks in the moon's hands, as
cities burn and waver
like fiddle notes.
just pottery
left behind, painted urns
speaking solidly, the only
cracked ossic shells on the human
beach of abandoned society.
last bodies – slippery
voice of clay, like feet
on river stones. she tells me
how much she loves pottery
and what it says about a world.
geometry of mycenaean jugs,
painted bulls, the living necks – this
poetry breathed up from the dust
of the earth,
godless, from man's own
breath.
Kylan -
Yes, I noticed it was called 'daddy'. And I am familiar with using titles as an extension of ideas in poetry. But once again, your themes - subthemes, in this case - are crystal clear: just the storyline, the facts, the action is muddled. And that is because you have not dropped enough clues, I think. So, let me tell you why I mistook the 'I' in the poem for the voice of the 'daddy' himself, and not the child as you'd intended (and that is probably why I did not hit on the details correctly):
Here are the fears: for one's child, of household chemicals, of dying of old age. These are the fears of an adult, a parent. Would a child fear for the 'safety of one's child'? No. Would they fear household chemicals? Probably not - they wouldn't know their harmful effects in the first place (not to mention what the word 'chemical' really denotes). Would they fear dying of old age? I hardly think so - perhaps of growing old, yes, but not of death as such. Children, on the whole, are quite carefree. Even if the father was abusive or alcoholic, I don't see how these fears tie in with the thoughts of the child. Which is why I assumed it is about the father (and not the child - nothing further suggests anything remotely childlike, either, actually).
These are actions and descriptions that could easily be correlated with either of the two - father or child. Considering how the former part suggests fears etc that are clearly mature, of an adult, it follows - by logic - that this narrator is the father themself. A father who is perfectly fine and likes to garden. A father who feels a kind of safety in gardening that daily living does not provide.
Does a child garden, dig for sprouts of their own accord? Would an abused child do this? Why? It seems much more likely the father, even here.
One can be too obvious and then again, not obvious enough. It's quite common, this - for the author to know exactly what they were talking about and for it to appear in a totally different manner to the reader. So, how do we prevent this? Well, I'm not sure one can, since things in one's own mind are always much clearer than when presented out to the world. It might help to attempt to rework this so that your intention is carried through all the way, to master the art of telling the story like it is and leaving the meaning up to interpretation (rather than the other way round).
Anyway, just thought I'd say, that's all. See what you come up with.
Navita
Hey Ky -
(You know how much I love experiments.)
So, a shorter poem - or at least one with shorter lines. This is certainly intriguing. An experiment, I presume?
I thought of three things while reading this. First, that there was little overall coherency, no extended metaphor, nothing even vaguely intellectual but just a string of pretty images, tied together linearly, chronologically. Lovely, yes, but not insightful as such. Second, it's funny I should read this just after rereading Delights and Shadows today. Since in many ways, it's very Ted Kooserish in its delicate simplicity - actually, so much like Kooser that I'd be hard pressed to distinguish this from any of his other poems. And something else I noticed about his poems - while they are short, accessible and meaningful in some way (any kind of little way, really), they're also not terribly focussed on a single overarching idea, on a single metaphor, a central axis. In that case, they're really sweet reads first time, but don't add anything particularly meaningful and longer lasting to one's perception of, well, life, really. Other than the usual nature-and-society-are-wondrous-and-magical sort of feelings, that is. My third thought was that it's so bizarre you should post this just as I went on a purity-dirtiness-cleanliness theme train (with gardening and bush-walking specifically in mind) after that talk of cleaning airplanes with wax. I sometimes think I think too much.
Just when the first three lines suggest the style is economical in its use of language, the next three throw that out of balance. Is this a poem too small to allow for such repetition? I think so, yes. Seems more like a list than anything, and despite you mentioning the word 'fear' three times, I don't feel it until the 'roulette of breathless gills' which is where it really becomes apparent.
1. Up to this point, there is a very earthly connection here, almost spiritual (despite the pissing cats, which sort of strengthens the reality anyway, so it's alright). And I somehow think the 'soft black dirt soft / and folding black around me' repetition was intended. Here it works because it's not so intrusive on the formatting of the poem, the flow. I'd change 'laid eggs' to 'eggs laid' since the former suggests that either the narrator has laid eggs (haha) or that the cats have, neither of which is remotely possible. Since the ambiguity is probably unintended and useless in serving to enhance any kind of vague theme you've got here, it should be swapped.
Okay, yes. I can see a subtheme. A theme that obviously ties in with the emotions - fear and security. Do I like the fact that the theme does not intrude on the moment? I'm not sure. On the one hand, the poem still seems disjointed - intellect-wise - in that there's nothing that strings it up together. On the other, I'm not even sure that matters. Even so, I don't think this'd be a poem to reread and find escalatingly deeper and deeper layers in.
2. It loses its earthliness between (1) and (2). Something about the entropy of spiders, toggle of centipedes and network of ants give it a very distant, modern feel - the words, I think, are too advanced, too much a product of the technology-based civilisation for this physical, ground-digging, primal type of poem. You're wandering around the realm of chemistry, cyberspace and engineering (networks) here. Might pay to keep in mind the connotations of your words.
Here is where the Kooseriness really strikes me, what with the ending that hits dead on and the smooth pacing, aided in part by the enjambment. That last line has something so poignant to it that it's ridiculously hard for me to articulate it in words - something akin to the ending of 'Selecting a Reader' (''For that kind of money, I could buy a raincoat." / And she will.') or the one that ends '...and the wind turns the pages of the rain.' Kind of like we get flung into the earth while a fire simultaneously erupts around us. And I think the underuse of figurative language is what makes this ending simile so striking; it actually stands out a lot more than it would were there similes all the way.
And here I will pause on a matter we have often considered in poetry. The extended metaphor. The concept of completeness of thought, of idea. The symmetry. Perfection, in a sense, while still being open to interpretation. All of which this particular poem most certainly lacks - but that begs the question: how incomplete can a poem afford to be (in its fitting portrayal of an incomplete world) and still be strong? Almost all of Kooser's poetry has what Gal would describe as 'machine gun imagery,' which, while being lovely on first-read, doesn't seem much more than a list of details later. I mean, sure, I enjoy it - but it is, admittedly, a very instantaneous kind of enjoyment, then. And I think you know it's more than instantaneous gratification that I am after when it comes to literature; I like to think. Perhaps that is a personal preference that dictates a kind of architecture in poetry that few have the energy to write, to craft. Even so, I think one can manage to capture the incompleteness of life even with some degree of completeness in the art. Parallel brushstrokes on a canvas look interesting, enchanting sometimes, but mean very little.
Anyway. Good to see you experimenting, regardless.
Navita
daddy
under the porchsteps
mushrooms clotting
like small, daily fears –
fear for the safety of one's child,
fear of household chemicals
fear of dying of old age –
white, roulette of breathless gills.
I wait with my elbows in
the soft black dirt soft and
folding black around me, smelling
of stray cats who have
been here pissed here, and
laid eggs. here, there is the
entropy of spiders,
segmented toggle of centipedes,
a network of ants, wood
creaking like human voices, but
here, I am also safe,
untouchable, and the insects
and I move in the same paces,
beats. I fall asleep here and wake up
in the neck-breath of the afternoon
sprouting, digging, full
of thin white roots, that pull
me into the earth like the memory of fire.
Dude, one word! CAPITALIZATION! You truly have some great stuff in there, but the punctuation errors in there are getting in the way! Keep on writing, you have a talent!
~Lindsay
"What seems to us as bitter trials are often blessings in disguise." ~Oscar Wilde
caryatid
young girls who danced with baskets
on their heads.
ripple of their sheer fabric
caught perfectly in stone, like snakes held still by the base
of the skull. these stone women are slow moving, precise
facing westward in acropolis, their features carved
out of light like candleflames and
(i think you are one of them).
of course, i love you for who you once were –
for when you could slouch,
when you had soft skin, and he felt you
like a market peach. when you had eyes
that were not always looking in the same direction:
away. when you carried nothing.
not even a child.
but you stand with the greatest poise.
in you, i see that village mother with the morning's
unboiled water in a five-gallon bucket on her head, smell
the night-scent of her skin, saronged
in dawn and dusk, she is you, you are her
it does not matter if you weren't born
on a savannah, or under the dry, granny-knotted
olive trees of greece,
because your skin gleams like marble,
when you draw the sheets up to my neck
in the moonlight, and I wonder at the roofs
that you uphold
at the flesh that you upbraid.
Spoiler
After watching Big Bad Voodoo Daddy in concert --
how does your garden grow
strange brass flower garden –
these hammered valved blooms,
in this hothouse of booze and stubbed joints, drooping
from the mouths of the jazzmen as if sucked
on for nectar – the stuff the bees couldn't quite rub
horns bright and spreading
like equatorial flora and
so much smoke in the air
that folks' faces are bright and peering
like streetlamps in san fran fog
the unshorn yellow rams and ewes of fog. the double time,
dancefloor cut, wild looped dropped swing
blasted horn and sax notes – singer's
voice is a struck match
and the trombone is an adze her
notes peeled shaved. the trombonist having
memorized each slide lock by muscle composition
like the familiar grooves, hollers,
depths of a woman's body
when you can see nothing of her in the dark
but her elbows
and shins. the upright-bass man twirls
his sober-bodied instrument in dim-lit
tarentella, stepping skinnily and
ragtime pounds in their ears
like bees stressed digging for good
uncut hits of pollen
unctuous pianist working the 88
vertebrae of the corner piano, banging –
woman in a lonely dress at the end of the bar
and the night folding around her
is a paper changing screen, leaving just her shadow,
and a suggestion – someone to be sung
about, mourned about,
but left untouched
Interesting interpretation, Navita. One thing I love about your critiques is how willing you are to delve beneath the deeper themes and beatings of a piece.
I wrote this piece to initially be about abortion. However, as I continued to write it, it felt to me to be more about the overemphasis of the sexual being. The narrator -- from the abortion point of view -- is finding all these empty spaces in the aftermath (teacups, shoeboxes). She is also frustrated by these feelings of emptiness, because she feels that she should not be so affected by her "womb", her primitive femininity. She finds innate beauty in the flower, but also know that the flower is more or less one giant sexual organ. She searches for her center, something beautiful, but also inorganic and her own. The "center" (unborn child) that was removed from her, as in many abortions, by a vacuum. However, I also found myself writing from a gender perspective. We are so often defined by sexuality. By having so much emphasis put on our sexuality, our intellectual beings and emotional beings take the backseat -- a feeling that is, at least to me, profoundly emptying.
Hope that helped, though I will definitely take some of your suggestions,
-Kylan
This latest was just about to begin growing on me until the latter half, whereupon it summarised the main idea too quickly.
I'll start off by saying that I liked what you were exploring here. Vaccuums, emptiness, a centre - in effect, the meaning of life, beautifully disguised in the metaphor of flowers which you continue throughout the poem. I'll take it stanza by stanza.
Okay. Introduction to the flowers. Beauty (perhaps a hint at aesthetics as a pursuit of life?). Gravity, if only for the sake of introducing the vacuums. I do not like how gravity is thrown in here, shamelessly scientific, with little hint later on that you will consider physics (however, I do note that you considered - briefly - the ecological/evolutionary/biological model - to put it bluntly: the propagation of the species as being the sole purpose of life). I don't think something as sternly sharp as physics belongs here, other than that mention of a vaccuum - but even then, I can see that it is more an emotional vacuum than a physical one that you emphasise. If you want it to belong, make it a tighter motif as you have done with the flowers. If not, remove it. And while I see one other religious mention - 'biblical' - in conjunction with this 'voices in a church' part, I do not really see it tying in elsewhere. Again, religion would be an interesting thing to link in more recurrently. As it is, I think the poem does well enough without either of these two motifs; there's enough there to chew over and think about.
Not a mention of flowers here, which you appear to dwell on in three stanzas out of five. It seems the teacups are thrown in there for the sake of the emptiness. I would like to see you challenge yourself and link your two major themes/images - vacuum/emptiness and flowers/centricity much, much more tightly. Juxtapose them closer, if a metaphor is out of order. At the line 'i ask myself where the centre of my body is' I wondered if we were getting into a discussion of head/heart (vs bellybutton!) -- this might have been interesting to have considered more fully as well, instead of half-throwing the idea out there. Again, the planets are great, but too stark, concrete, defined for the theme of this poem. The theme is much more abstract, more philosophical, emotional, one might say, and the physics is too clear-cut for it; every time you begin a soft, hazy contemplation, physics unbalances that softness; it hardens it.
(While I enjoy physics, here I do not see how it belongs. If you want to make it belong, think of possible themes to tie it to (but I think that would bloat the poem somewhat): perhaps contrasting that in biology/life, things are not as clear-cut as they are in the laws of physics? That there is no one 'rule' or 'law' that can apply to why one is alive like it does to how the physical world works? But yes, too sharp for my liking. Too much of a task to tie it in with flowers decently.)
As individual images, I like the image of teacups and shoeboxes and jars filled with nothingness. As a part of a whole, it seems these items are competing with the flowers for attention. The focus is shifted too messily - we are inside with the shoeboxes, then we meander outside to the flowers. A link between the two would be great. An amalgamation of motifs.
'What frightens me is their heads / are their wombs' - loved this line. That terrifies me when I read it written like that, too. Here you draw out the flowers, the 'centre' or 'meaning' being the 'womb' or 'reproduction' - but it got just slightly too obvious towards the end. I don't think that degree of description was required; 'selfless, pleasureless vulvae' was overkill.
Were it capitalised, it would have been much worse. Too obvious. Too blatant. And - most of all - too clear in a poem where clarity of this type seems horribly out of place. Do we need an explanation of why this is the theme? I do not think so; the questions raised are enough. In fact, I'd like to consider the questions further at the end of the poem, but the ending stops me from doing so, simply because it slaps the reason for writing in my face.
--
Overall, I appreciate what you are trying to do here. Hell, I even applaud it. Now the fantastical imagery serves a brilliantly greater purpose - to make some kind of a point that cuts right to the core, that asks intellectual questions and does not just parade a scene or a person for the sake of showing off poeticism. The tone here gives away the feeling - hushed, on tiptoe, nervous, bizarre, empty, spiralling, lost. It's nicely kept subtle to allow the greater weight to be given the the 'head' aspect - appropriate, I'd say. My only suggestion is to string together or meld the two too-different aspects of it better.
Navita
vacuums (OR -less)
the chrysanthemums are yawning
lionesses, solariums of petals – i trace their
veins in search of small beauty. little hints
at the rebellion against gravity, against
fourteen point seven pounds per square inch of pressure
drawing us to the ground, against vacuums
and apples dropping, like voices in church.
all of the teacups are empty, small porcelain
polio, their fumbling handles, full of nothing
and feeling it very keenly, like biblical women
with barren, unblessed wombs. i ask myself where
the center of my body is. i keep telling myself
that it is not where nature intended it, that
true civilization is the shifting of centricity,
around which I spin, centripital
like a planet in far, weak orbit, almost
not a planet at all.
i fill the shoeboxes and jars with this emptiness, try
to shake my shoes of that small, digging
pebble of null at the toe. it is only in these flowers,
their mouths full of pins, like seamstresses,
that i see any spaces filled, any waveless
stillness.
what frightens me is that their heads
are their wombs. sore, rubbed,
they gleam with the quiet polish of reproduction,
little swinging gondolas in the ferris wheel of
the cycle of life. they are bright, with strong
centers of balance, like confident women
with slender necks and beeless opinions.
they live for the next generation, which
will live for the next – these selfless
pleasureless vulvae.
in the kitchen, my bedroom, the hallways
i find empty things. we are vacuums, abhorring.
I try to trace my equators, tropics, wavery
lines of latitude and longitude, poles and
tilted head to the sun so that I might find
this centre -- an origin, a prehistory,
something to rebuild from.
Thanks June!
NOTE: Reviewers, don't bother with this one.
seti
and all the cupped deepspace radio dishes turn slowly
westward, like the pull of a blossom's head
toward the sun in time lapse, or allatonce
a savannah full of gazelle's heads rising at heavy breathing
and snapping twigs –
probing for quasars, pulsars, signals subtle
and scentless as mammal pheromones. we search
for shape, for the slow spin of a galaxy, turned
like an new dress modeled
from all sides.
somehow, it all comes back to statistics,
percentages, numbers, read-outs, that semi-religious
sect of probability – and water. take mars,
fractions further from the sun, its surface
chapped, dry as the bible's small books,
old troughs and rivers reduced to veins,
waterless deltas. and what cosmic significance
in this acute tilt of the earth – this planetary pisa –
to bake us just so, and evenly.
or the tides, the gentle nudges, tugs
like an old horse responding, bitless.
we are thrums, vibrations. we are waves and radiation.
we are our own fields of gravity, Dust. it is in
the unraveling of the dna of a cell before
the twin womb of mitosis that my doubt lies. it is in the
pull of water against gravity
up the trunks of the coastal redwoods,
robed in mist and footed by cryptic and fungal
ladies-in-waiting, like queens
posing for portraiture.
but how can I comprehend infinity, when
everything I am is a beginning and an end,
when a life is merely, a string unknotted,
unraveled. I cannot even see time
as a dimension, I am not
even a mountain.
vesuvius of a star in nova,
planets doomed and bright
as uneaten fruit. an astronaut floats in space,
helmet like an old pearl, visor reflecting
vacuums. he sees what I see in god.
it is not like staring into the dark.
Sorry to make two consecutive posts so close together. It makes me look bad, but, I thought I had another engagement, but I didn't, so.
On listening
I believe that the poem stands better with the final stanza, than it would without. As I read, I felt that this poem was thick, too close together, and could do with a bit of space to allow this to breathe; let the images sink in and express themselves on their own before you introduce a new one, dear, because I feel that, here,
this bit is too covered in the dust of the previous part for us to fully grasp the weight of what you're saying. Nonetheless, beautiful description here.
I adore this piece, mostly because of the ending metaphor, because I feel that you could fend better with a different opening to this. I like it, but I feel that this "I ask her" is too calm, too laidback, and for what you're writing about, I think that this could stand a bit of dramatization for effect, dear.
On painted woman
Of these three last posted, this is my personal favorite, because it personifies what was previously de-personified (that made more sense in my head), and all together, it's simple and elegant.
Your word choice in this poem is excellent. You do not choose from a wide range of vocabulary that sends our mind to look at images choicely unrelated, except for that one gazelle image, which I do think works beautifully, except,
I'm unsure if you're talking about facial lines, and think that clarification would aid. Also, gazelles in morning -- do you mean the literal morning, like daylight, or mourning?
The closing brings this together nicely, although I am not sure that how you said "I am between two pillars" works for me, dear. Could very well be just me, but I felt that this kind of took down the tone of the poem a few notches because it bordered the drab side of simplicity.
Nonetheless, I am absolutely in love with this one -- I love it, for the description you used, for how clearly your words constructed and supported an image and for the simple fact that you wrote this well.
Continue,
June
Kylan, Kylan, how long has it been since I've told you what I think of your works?
I adore them, simply put.
On période rose et bleu (or, deserts)
For poetic effect, I see how this could work; I don't like it because it's ending a stanza, and while it could work (as an image descending, painting a good picture), I'm not fond of it because the "turning" on the end feels like it's idling, and I think you'd be better off without.
I'm a bit quizzed on why you didn't say "returning gods" -- I think the poem is set in present tense, dear, and the scenery is being described in a creation-past tense, and because of this, I think you should keep this part active.
The poem itself, I enjoy. The cadence of images in the way you've structured them here gives this poem a very laid back, melancholic air, which I appreciate endlessly. I felt, however, that in some spots, you didn't fulfill what the image was asking of you. I adore the style you've used here, yes, but ask yourself: is the poem able to handle the restrictions of short description?
I'll say again, I adore the poem. I adore your images, your word choice, but what I'm not so hot about is the fact that this poem is less alive than your others (a good and bad thing, depending), and I'm torn at saying this is good or bad, because there is something that you've woven with your words that reminds me of a desert, and that part, I'm in love with.
Nicely done, keep writing,
June
Part 2:
at the bronx zoo with grandpa -
I'm a bit iffy on this one. One thing I'm certain that it's, as we say here "Beaucoup de blahblahblah" meaning, you talk a lot (and quite well) but in the end it's quite pointless. In the case of this poem, you've communicated some good strong images and well described, but it feels wrong, out of context completely. When I think of a zoo I think f it in a more childish perspective. It sounds like everything you've told me would come out of a poetic zoologist.
I think I mentioned this problem in part 1 of my review, maybe not. Sometimes, you just don't connect with your persona and it feels completely disconnected, not forced but slightly pushed. And you get a sense of things, of what you're trying to communicate, but you just cannot connect with the poem. It's like you built half a bridge, we can see it, hear it maybe, but you just don't take us there and wrap us up in images.
(Boy I sound demanding.)
période rose et bleu (or, deserts) -
Hm, somewhat, typical? Not exactly, but I've felt I've heard it before/seen it before (and I never have.)
It's not that the images are cliches, of course.
It had an exotic feel to it, which works perfectly with my mood and with your typical diligence, you describe things so vividly. It's lovely all in all.
One thing, I feel like this poem is bordering overstuffed (imagery wise) I feel like you're feeding me image after image after image. There isn't any wiggle room, breathing space and it doesn't flow, the entire poem is one giant tidal wave.
So, without that ability to breathe, relax a little I come out of it with a little less then I could of.
example:
so in three little lines - image, bone, cattle skull, singing, woodwind instrumental sound, red tail, hawk, ridge/cliff
Phew. That's a lot.
You get the idea, trim this poem a little, don't get too carried away in images, or you'll drown your reader.
listening -
The part you put in the spoiler box can be cut. It's fine the the way it is. Adding that stanza would kill the sweetness and finality of the previous stanza. The closing is lovely that way, it's slow and right at the right spot, with surprisingly the right word.
It works, here you paced your images, your words. So it comes out really sweet and clean. You started off a little shaky at the beginning, packing one too many images into the beginning, but you slow down halfway through and continue all the way through. Good stuff.
--
It refreshed again -.- So this came later then planned. Your most recent one will be reviewed at some point.
Hope this helped a little.
Kamas
painted woman
your oil paints mixed
like feelings on seeing
a piece of abstract art –
geometric shapes rutting,
combusting and rubbed off their
edges like bees dying purely
for sweetness –
it was the small of my back, the glacial
easing of my bones across
the purposefully unmade bed, or the way
the light hooked little shadows
under each of my vertebrae
when I turned just right.
maybe it was the angles of
my face that you told me was
your favorite part to paint, my small
creases of light, like laundry folded
on sunday morning. i would lie
for hours, glowing, as your
paintbrush pursued my cusps
and hollows across stuccoed canvas
savannas, as if my lines
were gazelles in morning.
on saturday i saw myself hanging in a gallery,
daubs of paint raised like an oilbased
braille, so that you could read the
decrescendo of my hips, the hammock
of my back. you cannot see my face.
I am between two pillars.
you have called me
portrait #16 .
... I was halfway done and the page refreshed...
.________.
Ugh, I hate that.
Dishes -
The emotion you portray is good, well communicate in the respect to the point of view. But I feel it was overly subtle. Your use of POV is well done, but the way you do it makes the general poem mundane. Your communicating big feeling, with small things like cantaloupe. This is clever but you manage to smother most of that big feeling, and it loses a lot of value. So you haven't balanced out your POV well enough.
This person is clearly not simply glancing over your concept, they're examining it. So they would absorb a little more of that sweet feeling and that's exactly what you want your reader to feel. The feeling of a bystander to the whole story, it's just a little taste to something they can't fit into without it being a personal experience. So you got to balance out your POV and emotional value with your words. Just a pinch stronger and it'll be great.
Trains -
It's nice to see you step out a bit of your niche subject wise. Even if it's just a little bit. Sure it doesn't work out all too well, but it was worth a shot. This would of worked a lot better if you'd taken a bigger step. You almost always use soft, fluttery and clever images and subtle ways of attaching things together. Adapt to your subject. Here you're talking about hardened parts of the city. The train tracks, hobos, graffiti etc. Soft fluttery images and subtle connections don't mesh well in my mind. Sure it's always lovely, but it's not as nice in the fine print.
Continue to change your typical resting place. Or at least test new waters. We know your wonderful at science poems, at poems with a certain nostalgic feel to them. Be a little bit more flexible, you might find another thing you're comfortable with.
Physics -
Honestly, one word. Boring. Just empty, and voided of any feeling. That's what I tend to find in most science related poems, that aren't so science - y. They're completely stale; because they're based on subjects or terms that follow rules. Things like friction, it charges; it slows down, increases resistance. You've taken that that and attached a couple what ifs to it. Nothing all to special. Same with the others, all these mapped out concepts attached, you map out your poem. Quite simply you haven't done anything special with them. Though I will admit, you do have some good images. They just kind of float on top of a watery idea.
(good call breaking up part 3 and 4 though)
I'll get to the rest tomorrow evening (My time of course) before I take off. Hopefully it won't refresh halfway through.
Thanks for the read.
Kamas
période rose et bleu (or, deserts)
i ask her to put her hand to my chest,
ridges in the sand underfoot,
wavy, inked with shadows like
the lunge of arabic characters. the desert heat
is a pueblo dancer with a headdress
of sun and feathers abandoned
in canyon, turning.
the mission bells undress and
swing from a rope into the swimminghole of each
of their own afterchurch tolls. a scorpion
uncurls like a baby's fist, and the
cactus flowers are stung ankles,
with only a night moth as a pollinator,
a feeling of closeness.
we ride on painted horses, swiveling
in the loose slips of a mirage. here,
the world goes by its indian name. we can
find our own image in the rorshach bone of a cattle skull,
our song in the woodwind flight of a red-tailed hawk –
we ride to the top of the ridge, to a
galapagos of low summer
lakes spread be(for)e us, as if we were
gods returned.
now, you stand at a dark window,
alone, burnt, like the chimney after
a housefire. santa annas of your hair
in my face, the scalped moon in
the rainbarrel, the kicked dog
of a doubled shadow.
I come up behind you.
the moon is at her holiest
here.
--
And with this one, I put the last stanza I wrote originally in a spoiler box, because I think the poem may be fine without it. You tell me.
listening
small motor of each heartbeat
that i am conscious of now as i
read about clogged arteries, plaque,
yellow galoshes of fat, and the number
of times a heart pumps in the lifetime
of a man, taking no union-mandated ten
minute break, except for the small richter
of an all-stop later in life, as the hand comes
to the chest, as if to catch the escaping spasms,
each dull-skinned plum-beat, the valved
middle c – the heart shivering like a
blossom rummaged for pollen.
i close my eyes, and think about the rhythm,
pulsing, steaming, like a hot kitchen on baking
day. i try to slow it down as much as possible,
conserving the faster waltz for last, until each systole
comes well-formed, paid attention to, slow
and hand-peeled.
Spoiler
to listen like an indian scout with his
ear to the cracked earth for what is
coming, and how many, and
for how long.
Thanks Gal!
at the bronx zoo with grandpa
your voice is a river carving a canyon –
silty, with shelves of strata,
and wearing away at the pueblo sandstone,
thrones and chapels, speaking with the reverence
and dome of cathedral-builders. when you whisper,
i can hear the grind
of the ancient's pestels.
you show me the aviary, the strange fruit
of perched birds, little tuned nodes, feathers
purling water droplets – heads cocked
sideways as if having heard the half-strung, unripe
note of a child practicing violin in the living room.
birds of paradise twitching, whirring
like clockparts – solutions to god's boredom on the sixth day.
i watch them in mating dance, gumshoeing, spread,
desperate tarantella to please the plain-looking females,
with calls like lost buttons, or stitches sewn
by thimble-less fingers.
you tell me that birds were the progeny of reptiles,
and then we move on to the reptile cages, drought-skinned
lizards with rolltop eyelids, the intermittant radio
signal of the tongue. snakes knot like
nervous stomachs around sacked lunar eggs. i look for feathers,
talons, two-chambered hearts, but there is no crane-grace
to these, no song, no closeness to the sun.
and the lions are tired, ears like pages-corners
marked for re-reading, suck-toothed. i can only
barely hear the tar-beat of the savannah from their
purrs and pulses, the palm-strike
of the djembe, hoof-clatter of gazelles, skinny
as light through a summerdress.
we leave, and i percuss in
evening sunlight, shadows drawn
like charcoaled fingers across cave walls,
the bone-creak of ancestry and a flash of incisors
in your voice, as you ask me
whether i'd like vanilla
or neapolitan ice cream
from the vendor.
Hi Kylan,
Gonna take the first poem right now and the others when I have more time, hopefully tonight.
If it had been anybody else but you, I would not have mentioned half the things I found wrong in this one. But it is you who wrote this and your talent will survive it, bad as this work may be.
As I said in chat, they aren't impressive pieces. I don't know what exactly pleased you about the first poem, but I found nothing redeeming about it during my first read. Then I tried again, and again. All I'm receiving is a piece dedicated only to itself. Sure, it's ostensibly about friction; really? You're a better writer, and moreover poet, than what you portray here. This was designed - perhaps subconsciously - to yell out to the world "Look at me! I like science!"
I can make one good comment on frictive. I've had the misfortune to read downright ugly recent science poetry on this site in the past few days/weeks. Yours doesn't sound as nihilistically self-pleasuring as those ones. It has a certain innocence to it, which is a good thing.
I would have liked this opening, and I tried very much to. However, the impact of the "straightforwardness" you tried to inject into your beginning is contingent by what follows after, and in this case, these four lines aren't a prelude to anything special. The reader sees the liftoff and expects there to be some kind of rocket explosion afterwards, some kind of rapid catharsis approaching, but instead gets...
this. The first two lines in the above quote have nice imagery, yes. But then you bring us back into the boring world of dusty grammarians and headaching mundanity of dissecting the nature of "friction" itself. Yes, we get it. You find fault with the way friction is portrayed, be it the way it is written and what that symbolically implies or the way it is drawn.
Move on. You only have so much space in which to write, and once you start bringing us to the metaphors and analogies, don't go fleeing back to the sub-theme of the beginning lines of the poem.
This is machine gun imagery right here, and it is doing nothing for the pieces. References to walking, heat, sex, pure movement, anxiety, and... mathematics? How do these all fit in to one another? I am frustrated especially with the potential that the "falling bodies", etc, had. You could have used a running image throughout the poem, comparing friction's quarrel with other forces with the duality of sex - beauty and ugliness, hot skin and cold pillows, a moment's passion and a regretful afterthought. But the reader was just thrown a bone for a split second as you moved on to your next image, then the next, then the next...
I understand what you're trying to do here. Simplicity in your poetry. And be assured that I see that it's working in degrees; like I said above, on a scale of 1 to 10 compared to others, it would be a 9. But compared to yourself, no. In short poems, it's especially important to stick to one conception throughout instead of a rapid-fire execution.
Work on this. It has the ability to be a perfect blend, you just haven't reached it yet.
(And yes, I realize that a lot of what I said, including the little rant about science poetry, makes me a hypocrite, but take my words for what they're worth...)
Hope that helped,
Galerius
Thanks!
There is really no relation to each part below. But maybe.
physics
i. frictive
but why is friction always regarded
as a negative force, drawn in diagrams
as pulling back, retarding the progress
of the forward force of acceleration?
the very word is a skinned palm, a match
stricken – the head like a twisted ankle –
the flint and tinder of two claustrophobic syllables.
because without friction we could not walk, there would
be no point A, point B, no glassy heat generated between two
falling bodies in a meniscus of bedsheets,
and an object bumped would continue on forever,
like a worry in the night,
or an irrational number.
ii. whispers
there is a heliocentricity to the windowsill-
blossoms, with their valence shell of bees
traded with the wind covalently. these little epicenters
remind you that it is a long way down, that the law
of falling bodies applies here, too, above
the manhattan pavement. I watch the way
you cut the last summer tomato, quick strokes,
halving, the bones in your hand standing out
like struck typewriter arms, knuckles white.
the tomato lobes glide away, unzipped, and the blossoms
on the windowsill bend in closer to hear your pulse,
that maddening, beneath-the-floorboards rhythm,
because people pay attention when important things
are whispered, or hidden.
iii. harris beach
the ocean tides recede,
like a bow across a cello's strings
to continue a note.
for some reason, it is the post-sunset
spectrum of visible light, layered in saturnal
rings across the horizon that takes my breath away,
and not the sunset itself, in ground and chapped pastels –
it is a period of transition, like autumn, or a year
of widowhood.
iv. lengths
and I do not count the rings of a tree stump,
I look for the periods of drought, fire, plenty,
because these are the lengths that
defined a tree –
its unsplittable knotholes.
A/N: Originally part 3 and 4 were combined. Good call/bad call?
io
). It would add such an authentic flavour to the writing. As it is, with words like 'rococo,' 'myrrh' [is this not Arabic?], and 'french,' [why drag the French into it], they sort of jump us in and out of different cultures for the briefest moment. Tie it up a bit more. Replace them.
I'm not well-versed in mythology, so I looked this up after reading it for the first time. And I was delighted to discover how all the details fitted in. Granted, lines like 'and now, puzzlingly, the cloying clobber of an udder' are going to make little sense to someone who's not familiar with the tale - but even then, you balance that well by having the title being so exclusive to an audience. Or rather, to their intelligence. This is a very still poem, a very caught-in-the-moment poem. Yes, there is a story behind it all, but what you're essentially doing here is describing her current state. Like a camera. Is that your intention? Or did you want to go for something more dynamic?
Also, a word of caution about the vocabulary. Since it's essentially a Greek myth, it'd be great to see you use more obscure words derived from Greek, rather than any other language. (Nymphs, diacritic etc - great
The ending was great.
fishing
Another still poem. Can't say I enjoyed this one - despite the vocab, it felt predictable. In fact, the bits of imagery that used interesting vocabulary here were about the only thing holding it up. Perhaps more character interaction is what this needed - but then again, I'm not entirely sure how much you could incorporate since it is about fishing. Something thoughtful, then? Since they have all this time to think? Yes, now that I think about it, a metaphor is what this needs. An extended metaphor tying it up and hooking us in like a fishing line.
fraternal
I'm surprised I haven't commented on this one already. I definitely enjoyed this one, even more so since it had one of those endings that acts as pointers for the reader to go read this poem again. A virtuous cycle of non-stop readings. I'm curious as to why you capitalised the 'I' here when you tend not to do so in your other poems. This poem was poignant, it was suffocatingly and expansively so - this kind of familial relationship that you describe; it's strange, but I think it could just as easily apply to sisters, to the child-parent relationship. Of course, the details would be different, then, but the feeling would be much the same. What sort of does ruin it for me a bit is the repetition of 'share' that makes it seem like a long list, albeit imaginatively described. I like the idea of sharing. It's the whole give-take thing that goes on between siblings, so it's great. I just think you might be a bit more subtle about it.
And the ending - how can I not mention this? I was so sure this was about brothers. And then, when you say, 'I decide to share with him my first kiss in an old car...her lips on mine, and yours, too' that throws everything out of perspective. I assume, of course, you mean the narrator shares the memory of the kiss so that the experiences become muddled - so that while the first is remembering, the second is experiencing (figuratively). This has an especially powerful impact - I have been thinking about why that is, actually, and I believe I have it: the previous stanzas are about sharing. Sharing sounds like division, an equal partition. But this - this is like amalgamation. It's so different to anything we've seen before, but it rings especially true - sometimes we live through our siblings as well as our children. So yes, full of depth.
dishes
Yes! A celebration of the minute, the commonplace. We have not seen enough of this, lately. Don't you think that there is something so fascinating about the near-mundane that it merits us dwelling on it? And equally so, this poem is kept short. I loved, 'every twitch of her hip / like the tug of a grin at / the side of a mouth.' I question the spacing of 'at noon / in manhattan,' though. At first I thought I liked it - sort of makes the details stand out to us a lot more. But then, it does seem unecessary; I guess it's a break or a bridge, then, between the 'busy street' and 'i am the only one watching her.' Sort of like the last heave before the curtain rises. Didn't think the ending simile was particularly effective.
trains
I seem to have noticed that this one and 'dishes' both began with the colour red. The middle two stanzas are overbalanced imagery-wise. Descriptive, but not particularly meaningful - they lack the graceful clarity of some of your more recent poems. I think more verbs here would be nice. More of the character, not just what he sees. 'Solstice aggregate' - too much of a mouthful. This ending should be a ta-da! ending with the way you've introduced it in the lne previous - as it is, the jumble of consonants just mushes it up.
--
But yes, I sometimes cannot comprehend how you can write this much. And well.
Thanks!
dishes
girl in a red dress,
every twitch of her hip
like the tug of a grin at
the side of a mouth.
high heels – white, a little smudged,
no doubt the new wife of a sailor as she wears
the cologne of seaspray off rocks and
lye. hands gloveless, she smiles
past the man with the fruitstand, with his opus
of oranges, canteloupe soft-headed as newborns' –
and when she crosses the busy street
at noon
in manhattan
i am the only one to take notice,
like the breathing of my child at night,
when i cant sleep.
trains
and the red meadow flowers along
the railroad tracks are rusted and sudden,
like the hammerblows of rail-men. I walk
all the way out of town on these tracks,
until I get to a string of box-cars –
squatted in by hobos with duct taped pants
and army surplus jackets –
graffitied – the calligraphy of the city-depths,
sprayed glyphs of the dead language of
the next generation, balloon-like, with the insensitive
geometry of a clown's laugh. the sad cattled
box-cars hot-iron branded by gang symbols –
these new vaqueros of rap and rooster tail
of blue bandana.
storm-glass heat, even at night, when the streetlights
tuck their heads in like cooped hens, and the crickets
are the wind-click of a music box. I walk these tracks, this
progenitor of the I-5, the sledged, oxidized trail
loping into the hills, pilgrim into the jericho fall
of the night's seventh trumpetblast.
we do not walk until the soles of our sneakers
are worn down, or until our lips chap like harmonica notes –
we walk until we cannot smell the smog, or taste
the grit of the city-lights in our teeth, only until we can
see every star, appearing all at once,
in solstice aggregate.
I owe these a more proper review, but at the time, I'd like to say that your writing only grows more beautiful with the passing of time. You've always got great imagery, soft-spoken yet powerful in delivery.
Going back to the poem 'lower table rock', a particular word struck out at me. I was just wondering if you were aware that the word 'squaw' is highly offensive to many Native Americans, equivalent to the n-word for African-Americans. I was just curious. If you are aware of that, then I'm assuming you're using it to develop the voice of the poet. If not...well, to a larger audience, I feel as if you might stir up some issues with that word.
But really, otherwise, lovely work. I promise I'll come back with something more productive when I get back into the swing of things.
fraternal
what I share with him is nebraska
like a motel bed shared by brothers
the comforter thrown off because the
hispanic bead-kneading housekeeping
ladies never wash the comforters, and the bedsprings
wince and wheeze in rutted detail the things
that have come to pass upon the comforters of this bed. I share
with him a mobile home park
the house up on cinderblocks
the windows open and the gills of morning drapery
inhaling and exhaling through the upstream creek
of sunlight, the windchimes dimpling their small bones
and mother in the yard with a garden trowel, and a pack
of ladies cigarettes that we gave up hiding behind
the bathroom radiator
a long time ago.
I share with him the stories told by grandpa
how he got in a fist-fight with billy hovel now a convicted
serial killer when they were both ten about
the drought of '54 and the miracleworker that
would drive through town every autumn in a jalopy
and a straw hat and a unctuous cornpone
I don't share winter – there is not enough of it,
it does not break in half it does not live in autumn fractals
or the regal numerators of spring blossoms. it is whole
and quiet like a small hour. hacksaw of icicles on the lip of
the shed roof that we would break off one by one
and suck down to snippets. for the morning chores, I would stand
among the cows for warmth, the tallgrass weighed
down with the tenor of last night's ice, pretending
that my fogged breath was tobacco smoke
with a cool limp and a backwall slouch.
I see him sometimes
in mother's face or in my own, a face
that might have been, like a quantum theory
of pedigreeing worlds, geneology
of what-ifs, and cosmic.
and I decide to share with him my first kiss in an old car
that ticks as we are parked in this empty lot,
ticks like june bugs against window glass, the nebraskan moon
a pear posed for oil-on-canvas still-life, her lips
on mine, and yours, too –
I think he likes her.
Thanks Navita!
For Blinker's Contest:
io
in chapped rococo, the bell curve of her hips,
myrrh-smelling fold of linens,
and the grope of a bedchamber's candlelight;
and now, puzzlingly, the cloying clobber of an udder –
the watering-holes of her eyes, with
rubbed flies clustered around their rims
like washerwomen scrubbing
laundry on the riverbank, and gossiping.
in the right light of pasture you can almost
see the lunar nymph beneath the bovine cusp,
standing by a creek which mumbles through a quarry of stones
as an illiterate farmhand struggling through
the knothole of a vowel – the french
impressionism, the daubed strokes of
wheatgrass in pliant motion – she grazes,
unused to the summery twang of a grass shoot.
but the gadflies are sharp, like immigrant names;
full of consonants and diacritics. tails flick,
she thinks of home, and the sea, and searches
for him in the clouds, gilted by the sun
like illuminated letters
in monkish text,
searches for release from the heavens,
in thoreau's quiet, unmoaned desperation.
fishing
stray cattails bushy with down,
sprung on the ridgepole of the pondwater –
we sit in the old tin rowboat, fishing lines
cast, untugged. you smell like the chinese
zodiac, a barn-full of animals, so much that
I can tell that you have recently sheared one
of your suffolks [year of the water sheep], with slotted eyes,
ears tagged like secondhand dresses,
or antiques. the morning rises
as lazararus with his mist of loose bandages –
you teach me how to tie a fly – feathered
squaws, squinted trinkets – for catching
the larger, more elusive fish.
by the end of the day, my hands are
glittery with the arts and crafts of
gutted and descaled rainbow trout. I wrap myself
in your denim jacket, smelling the baled hay,
the red chief, never having felt warmer.
little screw-threads of water winding down my
legs, the sabbath bread of an unbroken
sunset silence.
we listen to john denver on the way home,
the trees lit by the sheepskin of a full moon.
Why can't I double 'Like' this?
'Types of kiss, according to the encyclopaedia' - delicious, just as I would have expected from the title. Granted, after repeat mentions of cows and some dry images in the 'kiss of respect,' I almost started to lose interest, but you picked up again nicely in the third section. I looked up Longus' Daphnis and Chloe (why is the latter name not capitalised in your title like the former, by the by?) and was intrigued to find the reasons for certain pieces of imagery you used that I had previously thought were just thrown in for the fun of it.
Did you consider saving this for last?
Striptease, right? I'll allow it
Finally moving in the vague direction towards the kiss. This is so tongue-in-cheek - 'she knows what that dress does to me' - this is a brilliant way of initiating emotion without too much effort. That's the essence of poetry, I suppose - making it seem effortless. The 'teases with transparency' is redundant; you've already set up this striptease, so actually saying it does nothing. Makes it seem like you're putting in unecessary effort. And I'm going to make a mental note here: currently, we are operating in the 'I' and 'she' sort of narration. This changes - somewhat bizarrely - later on.
Ant hills? Are you sure? Ugh. Clay + ants + breast is creepy.
You must really love the way the word 'poppies' sounds - I have seen it in so much of your writing. I almost expect it in every love-poem. And about these prayer flags - do you want to add a religious dryness to it so soon? It's so free flowing right now - the 'prayers' is almost like a slap in the face, as if they've been caught too soon.
Hehee, lines from this remind me of the wiki article on Daphnis and Chloe - 'they do not understand what is happening to them' and 'the only cure is kissing'.' Admittedly, only those readers with some idea of the myth would know what these parts meant - to the casual reader, they do not make a lot of sense. And this is where I wanted to point out the strange narration - before, I take the 'I' to be the man and the 'she' to be the woman at the start. Now, there's still an 'I' (I'm not sure if this is the same character) and a 'you' - who is the 'you'? And the focus shifts from the former lovers at the start to the mythological ones - 'they'.
Not that it matters how the poem is read on the first-read, actually, but I just thought I'd point this out to you since I daresay most who read this will read it at least twice, hence picking up on that.
Okay, so the style of Daphnis and Chloe is pastoral. Still, I do not like these cows jumping in here. It takes away from that soft but intense focus built up in the previous stanza. Cows, irrigation, cowbells, cattle, reproductive organs, horns, indigenous arrows with saccharine poison (what does that refer to, anyway?) - this is getting awfully mechanical and farmy. What has it got to do with the kissing? What does it add to our perception of the storyline? This is the point where I begin to skim-read.
I almost expect this. And right from the beginning, I have this feeling that I'm not necessarily going to enjoy this one - perhaps that's the intention. It has me wondering though - only three types of kiss? Really?
Why is this so creepy? Words like tacky, breath in...ear, cat's cradle (esp all the bolded ones) make me shudder. Again, I'd recommend reversing the order of the kisses here, since it seems like a downhill slide from the first one.
Something cute and snuggly to get us back on the road. 'Mouthing so many urgent bees' - great. And quarks!
(not sure this is the best place for quarks, but I like the way they sound...)
Begins with 'night' and ends with 'evening' - intended repetition of the image? This part is clear, but not terrifically interesting like the part before it.
Sheesh - here you speed it up again with all the jampacked imagery. Though I gotta say - the second and third parts lack the emotion present in the first; the second because it describes sth religious and holy and the third because it's, well, about flowers, so it's difficult to feel for inanimate things (yeah, I know they're alive).
Individually, parts like 'stars dropped like coins meant for the boatman' are a delight. Overall, not the most extraordinarily enlightening ending in the world. Like the stars, I feel like I was just dropped off at the end, not carried and swung up onto a parapet at the final words. It was not vindicating in the least; more like I had to read till the end to find out what happened and then walked away, somewhat disappointed.
But yes, lovely poem regardless. Keep 'em comin'!
types of kiss, according to the encyclopaedia
i. kiss of love (see Longus's Daphnis and chloe)
under the yellow-lit nave of the parasol,
she turns her head so that the muscles
in her neck banjo, plucked by the worn finger-ends
of the sunlight. she knows what that dress
does to me – the looseness of its buttons,
the way it rustles, how in the summery afterlight
sluicing through the tambourine of willow leaves,
it teases with transparency. clay breasts of the ant-hills,
the sunstroke of california poppies, tallgrass
wavering like prayer flags – you read to me
longus's daphnis and chloe – they do not understand
what is happening to them; why when they are close,
their chests contract, why their hands touch like moths at light.
the only cure is kissing –
so says the cowherd, who passes on the irrigation path, his
cowbells cloying like reproductive organs, cattle horns tipped with sunlight,
as indigenous arrows with saccharine poison.
ii. kiss of respect
judas's tacky kiss, his breath at christ's ear
in gethsemene. cat's cradle of the soldier's torches,
disciples crepe-eyed with sleep. the olive trees
are in season, the moon is a jawbone and
the night is rubbed of its plush,
like a felt peach.
you would use a kiss to betray me?
iii. kiss of affection
quiet tulips, snuck off behind the stalls
to give each other kissing lessons – resuscitation
after mouthing so many urgent bees, who
rut like quarks. it is night, we are giggling
and exhausted from dancing, and watching the
evening's slow allergic reaction to the shivery
pollen of the moon with a rash of fireflies –
bright and fervent and nightly as mea culpas.
I kiss each one of your fingernails –
pink, abandoned shells. your eyes stare up, hubbled,
reflecting indefinitely the stars dropped,
like coins meant for the boatman, into
wishing wells, instead.
thank you guys so much! you're all wonderful!
deprecatio
i hold your hand – amazed at its lightness,
the bones brought out like tea-things, the feeble
saddle of your blood in your wrist, muffled
like lovesounds behind a motel wall.
your head wrapped in gauze, fragile –
do not bend – a turban for pilgrims
who have reached the onyx holy land of near-death, badged
with a rust of blood over the left temple. why is it
that at moments like this, watching the caught
moth of your breath, all I can think of
is high school anatomy? Which of these structures
is NOT found in the mediastinum?
The cavity surrounded by the rib cage
and bounded inferiorly by the diaphragm is the
outside the hospital window, the lights on the ice
are as faraway as trainwhistles, and the heart monitor
announces each heartbeat like attendants
of a duchess ball.
the doctor who looks down at you
is fascinated by the fractured booth
of your sternum.
the last film made in kansas
empty silos, and dust rising from the highways –
boys skinny-dipping in the kansas river, warwhooping
as the sunlight is scalped like a hand-peeled orange,
and a bible belt of dusty violets along the riverside cup their
bonnets and press on, airy as church organ notes.
aunty em sews a hole in her apron pocket, and
garland has her palm read by a fortuneteller with a wheeze,
and a belly that swells at his shirt buttons. as he holds her hand,
he imagines a tear in her dress, the revelation of her shoulder,
the closeness of her bones to her flesh, he sweats in
ceromancy, smelling of bdellium incense and old
card tricks and he tells her that her aunt is sick,
watching the cowlick of her eyelashes,
the apricot skin of her earlobe.
outside the gypsy cart,
the plum blossoms fall in calculation, in silk route,
like gagged tongues. she runs home – on the radio,
there is a tornado warning, and the fortuneteller
sits in the shade of the plum tree, the locusts
in the field sharp and plentiful as the dashes in an
emily dickinson poem, the dull tin
of the windless prairie, grassblade of wind.
he loosens his collar and looks at his hands,
at the droughtland of illegible wrinkles and lines,
calligraphing his placement, his coordinates.
Alright, since I'm a really lazy person I won't tackle the previous ones. :3 But as usual, you make this painfully difficult for me.
)
(Sorry this took so long to get up)
clockwise
This poem is intelligent to an impressive level. Your ability to layer these ideas and themes continues to impress me (and make me slightly envious.
The main problem in this poem is that while you've paid close attention to the layers and meanings, you haven't weaved your words as well as you usually do. So it comes across as wordy. So certain thoughts aren't as integrated, and they seem as if they were dumped on. And it's doing absolutely nothing for your poem.
For example, "swelling to ulcers" seems like an extra description for the wallpaper that isn't needed at all. Plus, it's not all too tangible. I can imagine wallpaper bubbling, and cracking but not in the form of ulcers.
Gypsy bells is also an added weight. You create a peaceful, kind of quiet image in the readers mind which is suddenly interrupted but ringing, or metal clinking together. It doesn't work well with the tone or overall feel of this stanza.
I really like the way you incorporated Darwin's finches into this to work with your poem. It's really well done.
You've mentioned pattern twice already in short succession. Maybe be careful with that.
The way you cut up this stanza isn't all too enjoyable. It's really choppy specifically through the middle portion. And it's making it a little more difficult to grasp what you're saying, as I had to stop re-read it to make sure I understood it and then move on. It's already a little bit of an odd sentence, you don't want to make it more confusing. It could work if the flow was there.
Your theme of light and dark is clever, you're making it surface in waves that roll up on top of your poem before they roll away, it's quite nicely done. What would of been really interesting if you'd timed it to create a pattern (which then links back to your mention of flight and weather patterns) Just an idea for future use.
Last 4 lines are great. Just lovely.
Mm, as Pengu said. Anti-climatic. But it's still a nice closure, though "theoryless" is a bit of a tongue twister and it's like tripping over the finish line. I'm not sure if there's a good word to replace it, but if there is look for it.
Overall, please share some talent? Thank you. Next one:
tourism
Yum yum yum.
This is great. How you can pair up each image with the glissando, it's all very sweet and easy to picture. I can see myself in that place.
Chromatography is too specific, and blunt for this poem. You've captured a little flicker of emotion in your reader, but you lose that grip a little bit in coherency. For example, flame and knee touching, at first it's not to clear of the link until you think about it for a bit, I think you want it to hit your reader as they are reading, but I only understood it as I read it again. So be careful, you shouldn't sacrifice emotion for simple imagery. The first is much more powerful.
I'm unsure of your meaning of galilee, though if it is both the place and the chapel porch, good job double weaving your words. I'm not to fond of "buttonhooking" because it's an odd word that makes the reader pause, but it definitely works in the poem.
Hm, I'm having a bit of a love/hate thing going on here.
The good thing is that it makes you think of the context of the story, and it allows the reader to give a time to the story and picture the people. It's really great that you can do that. It give me the feeling that the narrator is talking about great grandparents when they fell in love, it's kind of sweet.
But, it's so forward and unbarred. It's like the narrator decides to make a note in the middle about when this took place. It's not as cleverly worded, or disguised as before so it makes the reader kind of double take. Thinking "where is the narrator going with this?"
Also, I'll second what Navita said. A dog is cute, but your comparing a man brushing the hair out of his love's face to an artist painting the inner thigh of a dog...
As a woman, I disapprove.
Soft way to end, but I think it works. Everything in this poem (except that one stanza) was subtle and sweet, so I find this a perfectly suitable, yet clever end.
I'm sorry for taking so long and being so useless
Kamas
Semyonova
BAM. I love this. I gushed to you in PM in chat about how much I love this. Against the other poems in your thread now it runs equal second, but it is still wondrous. I have nothing ill to say, but I wanted to blubber about this again so you realise how much I adore it. Winmuch? Totally.
Mammogram
There is more cluttering up this poem than I am used to seeing from you. This is a comparison to the sleek and effectual poems you usually turn out. Much like the other poem in this post – Red October – this is a forgettable poem for me. Several factors contribute but none so much than I feel bombarded by imagery – unnecessary imagery – the moment the poem begins. I want to feel the point of the poem earlier than we do. The first two stanzas are somewhat indulgent, the first particularly. It sets the scene but takes a meandering method of doing so and I lose interest quickly. I think I am so surprised because I am not used to being bored by your poetry, but that is the most prevalent feeling I get from this. I hate that this is the way I feel, but I cannot avoid it. Stripping this back and reshaping it would help. Your imagery is always salvageable, it is how much you use and how you use it which will save this poem, I think.
However, as always, you have a line in here that I would die for. In this poem it is : your first child, slippery
as an amphibian heart, holding her to your chest – you
are mammal”
This is a evocative, emotional set of lines and I almost turned my whole opinion of the poem on it, but sense won over awe.
Red October
No. No, I don’t want to comment on this poem. But I will all the same because this is why I’m here, is it not? You are right that there is something wrong with this poem (as with the above). It is too... contrived? The situation is constructed, filled up and bound against itself so tightly that we know it almost immediately and it is entirely forgettable.
Am I allowed to say that you have too much in this poem? I believe that is the problem. This could be a beautiful poem, except that I don’t feel any of the words, or the imagery and I believe that is because the poem is saturated in it. Because this poem talks in a concrete way – your subject matter sticks out without being clear – the imagery surrounding it flails against this wavering purpose. It is made further maddening in that I can’t touch the centre of the imagery, it leaps away with each new picture and I am left with bits and pieces and no whole.
If I sound grumpy it is only because I am a little tired, feel free to ignore it entirely. I would like to see you strip this poem bare and start again, twining that imagery around a central thought and moving outward or upward or howeverward you need.
As an aside: You need not have breasts, or a heart attack, to write these things with emotion and feeling. You do this well all the time, don’t be scared or intimidated by the fact that you haven’t experienced something, instead experience through the poem itself as you write it. The right emotions should show, then.
clockwise
*Melts into clockwise like a slack-jawed fish on a grill* I love this. It’s succulent, is what it is. I have words about the other poems, but they’ll go before and after this. Because this is just delicious. Perhaps it’s because I’ve just re-read all your poems in order and I was disappointed by your last two? Or because this is just truly the perfect poem for my kind of style that I identify with the skill it takes (and that I often lack) to meld real and unreal so very well. I am rambling. Facts!
Your first stanza is better than the ones following. They become more specific somehow – they pronounce your concept much more clearly and I dislike that, but this is a very personal deal. Your last stanza is anticlimactic in the face of the first but the more times it is read, the less issue one can take with it, and we both know poetry should always be read more than once. I am aware that Navita has given you an excellent review, I am forever shamed that all I am able to do is gush around your work.
tourism
Blah-de-dah! I’ve already mentioned that the previous poem is my favourite, but this is running a close second. The description in this isn’t as sumptuous as the last but you have some lines that I would murder a small child for. Such as “buttonhooking each vertebrae” and you knew I would love such a line, I think. You were very aware when you posted this that I would fall in love with the line and the concept and the following haiku to end the piece. How dare you not prepare me, really.
However, it does not give me as much brainless delight as the piece before. There is something colder here, less personable as I found the previous. Why? The details are too much for me. I lost the poem entirely when you introduced the year.
"I sit here at night, on their bench, and I try to feel
the year 1940 and the solemn way he would brush
her hair out of her eyes,"
Right here is when the magic ended, so to speak, for me. Suddenly this wasn’t a most beautiful ode to a woman, or lithe description of a clandestine meeting, or even the wedding night. It was a fable pieced together from lies and half told truths, if you understand me. I wasn’t able to trust my narrator anymore, I was listening to him but at the same time frowning in frustration, because the story had lost all interest for me. This was epically sad for me, and I wish it hadn’t happened because I could have easily fallen in love with this couple and their gentle remonstrations.
Mostly it’s frustrating because I want to love everything you write without condition and here I almost make it, but it slips away from me like a wave. I would take out all personal pronoun and the year, don’t let us think this isn’t happening as it is, we want the whole picture, not just the memory of it.
This isn't very comprehensive, I apologise. Feel free to delete your crit as this hardly makes up for it. XD
Oh...God.
I've got relatively little constructive to say to this poem. In fact, I'm having some trouble with coherency right now, thanks to just having read it. This one, I feel like I could read again and again and not ever get tired of the words; what's more is that I feel like I'd actually remember it on successive readings. Here is something really unique. It's not just a fantastical description, but something with an emotion so sharp, so delicious that it's difficult not to feel attracted to it. So, this is another example of the fact that you can do both - write intellectually meaningful poetry ('clockwise') as well as emotionally captivating poetry.
Spinal disintegration, much?
And something for us to think about in here, too! The idea of looking back at past newly-weds - I've never seen this done before. I wonder what the relationship of the narrator is to the lovers. What the year is when the poem is set in the present. I wonder who the lovers are. I wonder if the narrator is really a tourist on their memories, or whether this is just a metaphor for them.
I wonder, hence, I think.
The only part that vaguely detracted from the sensuality of the piece. The inner thigh of a dog? That hideous word is taking away from the smoothness of the imagery. Everything was great until we got up to that word...sure, inner thigh of something - just not a dog, please.
Perhaps too contented, too soft an ending, too relaxed a picture for my liking, but the fact that there was something intellectual for me to laugh about - haiku - was enough. A near flawless poem. Full of feeling. And the stanzas were arranged beautifully - quite dainty, don't you think?
Yes.
These are getting better and better.
Thanks Navita!
tourism
the cherry blossoms glissando, each
tongued, like a separate woodwind note – a sweep
of a gown across cobblestones, the lifting of a veil,
and two candles lit on a marriage night.
it is before this pond, with its chromatography of fish,
scales lit and smothered, like a flame cupped
against boreal winds by a hand, that their knees
must have touched
calligraphy of his fingers, lacing up her spine,
buttonhooking each vertebrae – the lidded blossoms
floating on the pond, tiny and luckless as
the fishing ships of galilee.
radium of the moon on the hunch of a pond ripple –
I sit here at night, on their bench, and I try to feel
the year 1940 and the solemn way he would brush
her hair out of her eyes, like tiepolo painting a shadow
on the inner thigh of a dog.
after delivering their message for millennia, the stars
deposit their light on my skin; non-euclidean dew – it is
the light he saw in her hair, the skim of apricot
on her collarbone.
tonight, they are in
this haiku, caught like finches
until the morning.
A lot of intellectual stimulation here. And a clear mention of string theory at the end, which delights me. Peppered with example upon example taken from the scientific world, I think this poem is talking about something much deeper, something beyond the hows and whats of science. Perhaps it gets into the realm of religion, faith, truth. Perhaps it asks to deviate from a longstanding faith, a centre point and suggests that movement, change, spinning clockwise, evolution of ideas is the key.
I am intrigued, and I want to read this poem until I understand. I'm going to break down my step-by-step impressions, formulation of my reasonings and what I took the poem as meaning. But first and foremost, what I love is that there is such a clear intention and that it is still so wonderfully open to interpretation.
Light/dark, truth/ignorance -- a common association, admittedly, but still reasonably cleverly disguised. The juxtaposition of 'gaslight' and 'mind' sort of gave that away (and I will admit that I may fully interpret this differently to your intention, but I will endeavour to be consistent
And here, a separate idea. Turning, spinning, clockwise movement - galaxies, birds, double helices (yay! more science!), wind, everything. The narrator is contemplating everything. And everything is movement, essentially. Everything is change, a turn, a clockwise spin - but I'm not sure the significance of the clockwise. Surely, it could be a turn in any direction and the essence of the idea would stay the same? And why the 'tall tales about primates and protozoa'? Does this hint at some skepticism at Darwin's theory of evolution? I thought the narrator was pretty pro-change?
Now, I'm going to try and link the ideas before with this together. Truth/light vs ignorance/darkness and change/motion/turning combined. However, as yet, you have not integrated the two - fine by me and the casual reader, really, since it gives us time to think about each one; it makes us ponder the relevance to each in conjunction with the rest. Taking a 'the medium is the message' approach to this, the fact that science acts as your medium/imagery links well with the theme of truth vs ignorance. In fact, it also links well with religion/faith as you mention later. And these two come at crossroads at the Christians' outcry at Darwin and evolution, essentially a form of change or movement.
This is an amazing level of integration.
I'm taking this in idea-sized chunks. This one is where we delve into faith, ideas. But...faith in what, exactly? Religion? Science? Faith needs shadows...i.e. it needs doubt? It needs respite from the concrete, unchanging, solidified nature of truth? That flexibility/movement/change/evolution requires some deviation from the norm, the supposed 'light,' the unchanging truth? Guess that makes sense. Faith is less a seed of our thoughts ('dendrites' - genius
This poem is multilayered. It is not just clever - it is intelligent, and it makes some fascinating - though perhaps not new - points about the nature of science, truth, faith, religion and change. The layering of ideas is extraordinary - they each link in with each other and stand well on their own. It's tight, sometimes so much so that the crossover between ideas is blurred, just as in life; we do not know whether you mean religion or science or both when you say 'faith,' for example.
Kylan, I enjoyed this. It would be great to know if I came close to your intented theme, but even so, the ambiguity is what lifts it up all the more. I would be happy to take another look at it, if I have been incorrect (but consistently so!). Thanks for the read.
Thanks Heather!
I'd really appreciate some input on this one, guys!
clockwise
blue gaslight of an ignited mind, a match
struck, the light high and sharp like a cheekbone
in the dark. the wallpaper fading, swelling to ulcers
where the water has leaked from the ceiling – tonight a
power outage, and so a troupe of candles perform,
warm wax slipping, silvery in the wren light as tones
from gypsy bells. I contemplate the turn
of a galaxy, clockwise, as the flight pattern
of darwin's thin-beaked finches that flew from the galapagos to the americas,
as watson and crick's double helix, spinning tall tales
about primates and protozoa,
as the weather pattern that blew
over the powerlines tonight, as everything –
or what you told me that night when I said that it
was hard for me to believe, when you told me that
faith required shadows, relief from the light, and that it was
less of a seed, as matthew wrote, a seed
sprouting roots – dendrites from a nightcap –
like connections being made in a brain
between ivan pavlov's carol of the bells and saliva, and more like
the silkworm cocoons on our anscestor's mulberry trees, spinning,
stopping, resonating, wrapping, strand by strand
the strings of the universe, theoryless.
Ooooh, poetry. Yum. You always make me feel inferior and awe inspired, my friend.
Demeter to Persephone
I can't resist this one, Persephone is such an interesting character to write poetry on, yes? You've got beautiful imagery and well placed words, I'm particularly loving the 'cross sitches' and 'middle daughters'. I found your first stanza to be soft, slow but pretty and then your second stanza was clever and insightful. The third was a little downhill for me. I'm not sure that I like the reference to clothes though the second half was better and the sense of how human she is- that was great. The other stanzas I can only praise. There's very little to refine here, Kylan. It's excellent.
Semyonova
Sometimes you get a little wordy and lose me. I was trying to follow the story you have here but the overload of images kept getting in the way. I think perhaps you thought to imagine the ageing of Semyonova, the decline of her career or maybe even just the remembrance of it? But there were just so many images moving, turning. It creates a beautiful sensation while reading it but there's nothing there at the end. There just wasn't enough emotion here for me. I'd have liked to see more hints of a jealousy, sorrow or pride.
mammogram
I liked the circular feel of the first stanza, how it returned to describing the lilies right at the very end. I wasn't sure about 'hints the kitchen air'. Perhaps fills/ paints/ shades? The second stanza was stronger and I really loved the kettle imagery. The hope chest reference again. I think it works much better here but there's a lot of dis-jointed images in this stanza. Let's take a look.
The next stanza catches the reader up perfectly. A few nice little touches of humour in this one, I like that. The last two stanzas seemed to slip away from me. I didn't recognise the reference and as great as the words were, I felt lost. I'm not even sure if you gave us the conclusion of the results or not? Perhaps the general bitterness and melancholic humour through the poem is to hint of that? I did like it though. I almost wish I could be of the older generation so I could connect with it better.
I have to go bake now else I'd have done that last one too but I'm going to add this to my reading list and I'll visit back for certain. Thanks for the read,
Heather xx
mammogram
lioness lilies, posed as if for self-portraiture,
brushstroke of stamen
which hints the kitchen air with the pheromone of spring –
you keep them around, replenished when their
petals brown, like the page-corners of the family bible,
because they remind you of solidarity, and sisterhood,
with their red throats and thumb-pricked promises.
now, the teakettle throws a temper tantrum,
urgent, as if the boiling water in its drum
was for a birth, or to clean a wound. you pour
a cup and wonder as the finches outside – with yellow,
judaic breast-patches – hop like skipping rhymes,
braiding nests with strands of your hair, and straw,
and ribbon – as you wonder at identity, wonder
at thirteen, scrub-chested, 30AA, your hormones
locked away like a hope chest full of nuptial
napkins and teaspoons, and the liberty of the word boob.
rabbit-trap of your blossoming –
sapling bent to a noose. you would rub the
hard pebble under your nipple, and hide
behind the shower-room steam, like odysseus
under rams-wool.
or at eighteen, heavy as market fruit, hanging like
the peal of church bells, and just as sexy. at thirty,
a baby cries and you ache. your first child, slippery
as an amphibian heart, holding her to your chest – you
are mammal, and the glands swell in gratitude like
summer peas.
in your hand, you hold the results – and you think
about the elgin marbles, statues looted from
the partheon, you think
of the bordello of marble women with damaged torsos,
missing heads, shattered like a cubist landscape
and you have never found these
fragmentary reflections of god
more human.
red october
you press your hand to your chest to feel
the stirruped thumps, warpath of palm-slapped beats,
the recitation of a cardiac psalm, reassuring yourself
that under that bonnet of ribs, a heart stills swells,
like a boy's midsummer pocket occupied
by a pond frog.
you feel like so much plumbing,
valves loose, arteries twisting s-bends –
the iron intelligence of blood-piping that freezes every winter
at the thought of your daughter ice-skating on
the irrigation canal in the backyard.
you know what it feels like – the sudden weight,
the feeling of ancientness, of stepping from the catwalk
of taking things for granted, and
into unsupported space.
you work in the garden, afraid of being still,
afraid of each heartbeat,
which drop with the finality and heaviness of
galileo's lead balls proving gravity from the tower
of pisa. the sunflowers rise around you, rattle-faced,
palestine of onions, domed on their horizon of the growbox,
tulips cocking their heads, like doctors
pressing stethoscope against
your chest, listening for the submarine ping, the
red october of diastole and systole.
you listen to the tired humoresque
of your heartstrings from the unslept-in
bedchambers of your ventricles, curtains
of dark flesh pulled in like four-poster curtains.
and as you weed the tomatoes,
you can feel each teaspoon
of blood at your fingertips.
--
A/N: Something doesn't feel quite right about these two. They feel overdone. Or maybe it's the fact that I haven't gotten more than 6 hours of sleep in the last three weeks. Or maybe it's the fact that I don't have breasts, and I've never had a heart attack.
One word. Wow. You have skills. Amazing and beautiful I loved the imagery.
Many thanks Kamas!
Semyonova
years of swan lake now resonate in her
fluted bones, piccolo of osteoporosis, mother-of-pearl
joints releasing the low note of an unplugged sigh.
and when she dreams, it is inevitably
of curtains, the great coma of stage curtains,
rising to a barren stage, the bows of the pit
orchestra steadied all at once, like the sudden
summer silence of field-crickets. curtains
at the end of act three, deepening purple velvet,
like the darkness that surrounds the mute
throat of a candleflame.
she sits in the ballet room, mirrors showing
every angle, every vertex, every degree
of beauty – carnival-esque, as beauty always is.
she sits and regards the girls, their flats laced,
hair pulled back to reveal the smooth dune of the forehead,
wrists palely upturned in breathless suffering –
they are soundless as onomatopoeia,
but imitate bodily the trill of water through stone.
it seems that it is only in a garden
can she reclaim inner grace. the third
movement of a fountain's babel, the lily of the valley
ringing like pavlov's bells, causing dew
on the tongues of the dogwood blossoms.
she watches the seedlings for signs of gesture,
she watches the threshes for signs of stillness.
she choreographs the flora, the braid
of water, the bend of stem.
on a warm pillow,
she lies at night, and she can hear
the applause at bolshoi in her cupped palm,
deafening as the sound of the sea in
the phonograph of a shell.
Alright, since there are quite a few to pick at, this'll be a little bit briefer then I'd like, but anywhoo.
Twelve
I don't see much of a driving point behind this poem. It's rather scenic, which we all know you're terribly good at.
The descriptions are sweet, and summery which fits perfectly with my mood at the moment. You've got some really interesting lines in here, but they seem to lose potency because of the lack of point in this poem.
Lines like:
Both are really lovely lines. But again they don't have the driving force to run home with us. So they kind of melt away, with the rest of your poem. And when I'm done, I haven't retained all that much.
So purpose is your main issue. Another thing I noticed, that isn't all that bad is the biblical references. You seem to like to do this in the poems that give us more of a country side feel. But again, you don't take that anywhere. It's just pretty words sitting in a pretty form, that sound pretty on our tongues.
talking of michelangelo
Hm. I quite liked this one. It's got more of a point, a message/story to get across. So what you say is more powerful. Which is great. But the issue that arises, is that your imagery isn't as graspable. It works in the context of the story, but through the 4th stanza the entire thing starts to get really complex. And it kind of winds down again at the end. So there's this random peak in complexity in the middle so it's kind of awkward. Remember, you do want to keep your reader on their toes, but you want to keep it as constant and smooth sailing as possible. What I really enjoyed was your ability to weave all of the things we know you're good at talking about together into something solid and linked neatly.
I don't have all that much to say unfortunately.
peter
Hmmm. I enjoyed this one a lot, though I don't think it qualifies as poetry to be exact. You described something simple, and used the imagery to tell the story. You're good at that ;D It's just complicated enough to grab at our attention and make us think, and simple, descriptively, which allows us to sort of immerse ourselves in this piece. It's lovely. (Not to mention my love affair with any reference to Greece <3). It doesn't exactly scream seriously worked short piece, but it's still enjoyable.
Demeter to Persephone
Now this is lovely. I personally adore the story of Persephone, and here, you seem to stray slightly from your typical beat around the bush way with words. It's a lot more direct then usual.
Things like:
are curt, direct and full of punch. It's great and refreshing, because you've intertwined just enough imagery through the curtness to keep it poetic and sweet with your signature. You spoke of having a little more exposition in my poems, I shall use this as a reference.
Natural History
Ah, so this one is a bit of a powerball. It keeps your typical style of writing, while straying from your typical imagery focuses and has some power in it's bite. The images are fresh and insightful, but overall it's kind of boring. Dusty and overviewed, like museums. But I guess that's a personal taste. Otherwise, definitely keep working with these imagery concepts., they're really interesting to read. But do watch out for overusing more academic terms, you don't want your reader having to turn to google every few lines. It works in the case of this poem, but it's borderline. And I'm pretty sure not everyone knows what
things like "fibonacci, cro-magnon" are/mean.
opal
Last one, gave me shivers. You did something similar to what you did in the one about Persephone and Demeter. You were more forward with your words then typically so. Except this one is kind of like a child peeking from behind their hiding spot. you know what's there, but you can't see it. It's really a lovely sense of mystery. But the message you get across is almost somber. Your ability to describe space in such a simple but effective manner is quite admirable.
I love these lines. They're slightly degrading and slightly ironic too.
But these:
aren't so effective. They don't really support all that much, specifically the second part of that line.
Anyways. I shouldn't be reviewing at these hours.
Great job (and thanks for the review)
Kamas
Thank you much Navita!
opal
fission of an atom,
like the lobes of a brain,
and a universe distills, dew
on the upturned leaf
of a theory.
it warm and huge, this beginning,
like a precious stone worn
on the chest of a queen. picnic
stars spread – existence uncurls
like a sowbug in a still palm.
from what did we originate
but an eyewink, a flashpoint
of infinite density, a node
of chance. here, in this word
infinite, I find
solitude, and a prayer for god.
what is this human preoccupation
with size? white dwarf, plutoid,
big bang. self-conscious of our own
puniness, we measure, reassuring ourselves
with millimeters.
tonight, the new moon is a gaslight
the lamplighter forgot, and I can feel
everything unspooling around me,
moths munching on the closeted silk fabric
of spacetime, and the tickle of entropy
curling columns in my bones.
Hey - I got a bit grouchy this morning since I wrote something here and the computer ate it...but I returned. ^^
There was something wonderfully horrific and fascinating about 'gamete of a galaxy' - associating the small and insignificant with the vast and infinite is an intriguing idea. Not sure it stands up to much thought, but hey, it sounds good, so what the hell. But my favourite line was 'a chromatic proof / of godhood.' That got me laughing. So did 'he painted adam's ten first edition toes.'
talking of michelangelo
I can picture you having a lot of fun writing these. In 'talking of michelangelo' there is that recurrent flowery, birdy, galactic, religious, anatomical imagery that I daresay is your forte (or are they the things that you need to change?). I, well, actually forgot that you were writing about paintings at some point during the poem and got carried away by the scenes themselves - kind of like sitting at the painter's shoulder and then tipping headfirst into one of his creations. Had to look back at the title to remind myself.
peter
Overall, I didn't enjoy this one as much, the imagery being altogether too dense in the opening paragraph to prompt me to continue reading, but still, there were some fantastic lines. The dialogue was funny, too, and what I liked most about it was the lack of quotation marks. Sort of made it slot in perfectly with an otherwise prose-poem. 'Could move each of her toes on their own. Can you do that? I cannot,' being a favourite there, as was 'Get some good photos? Yes sir, thanks a million.' I guess what I liked here was the voice of the characters coming out, as opposed to your poeticism being on display, which tends to get very similar in its wondrousness. The stark interaction of the characters was a breath of fresh air. The ending felt like a cop-out, but I guess it's a short piece anyway, written for a bit of amusement, so I wouldn't worry too much.
Demeter to Persephone
Looks like this one begins with flowers too (the downside of reading them all in one go is that I tend to notice similarities) like 'talking of michelangelo' did, with the same abstraction in the beginning - by which I mean only the landscape has been introduced, not the characters. In contrast to 'talking of michelangelo,' I found the tone of writing much clearer, less showy, less overdone. Lines like: 'we embrace...but you know how we remember things...I tell myself I am not surprised at how you have changed...how you bruise easily now...this reunion is different than the ones before...you look at me and we are strangers' (that last one was amazing) - these lines are the characters speaking directly, with few Kylanisms clouding their dialogue, while still retaining the same softness and beauty of the rest of the writing. I like this mixture of both, actually, and I guess what I'm saying is that I enjoyed this more than the others simply because it had a focal point while still going on some tangential exposition. Good balancing.
natural history
Uh oh. I wonder if we're going to be introduced to any characters here or if it'll just be landscapey and hence...similar to the others. But oh ho! We not only have 'geodes splitting open like mother's locket' but also 'I think of how much pressure it took...' thus introducing a distinct character with, well, not as sharp a clarity of tone. Perhaps the only place where I felt the narrator was making a real confession to the reader was in the last lines: 'it is hard for me to imagine that the fibonacci sequence...is as random as love, or godless.' Everything else was characteristically pretty, especially the scientific languge - 'cholorplastic, incubates, cro-magnon, gene.'
natural history
when everything was feathered, geodes
splitting open like mother's locket to display
a radio-full of crystals, tender
uterine wall of gem and quartz. I think of how
much pressure it took to squeeze this split rock
until its insides jeweled like the silence
of an obedient wife.
millions of years old, shedding carbon isotopes
like dead skin cells, I move on to the bones of
the first mammal, developing pouches and
milky glands. I imagine it burrowing in the chloroplastic
wetland of warm earth, cello-headed ferns rising like a death toll,
lilies venomous, papery as empresses. man incubates
eastward in eden. god makes appearances
like hitchcock.
the museum's pillars, austere as redwoods,
uphold the roof over a lobby with a set of glassed-in
cro-magnon bones, skull shrugging off the responsibility
of opposable thumbs. it is so small, it is named betty,
and it is a mystery how these fragments of marrow and tube
clothed in skin could have survived long enough
to pass down a human gene, like a favorite
family ghost story.
the pedigree blurs, the universe contracts –
it is hard for me to imagine that the fibonacci sequence,
the slumber of a nautilus shell, the hush of a bud
is as random as love, or godless.
Demeter to Persephone
the cross-stitches of frost are undone, untangled
from the windowpanes at your approach – the flowers
push through black dirt, quiet and vital as middle daughters and
as it seems for the first time in years, a thrush emerges
like a trait for freckles that has skipped a generation,
into the evening.
we embrace;
you smell like a brass instrument
removed from its case after years of unuse,
eyes slipping like mother-of-pearl valve keys,
mildew along your horn, wheezing a little
your tune that I remember to be sweeter, clearer, but
you know how
we remember things.
I tell myself that I am not surprised at
how you have changed, how you wear your clothes,
hopechest of your heart filled with broken, household china,
how the darkness clasps where he has touched,
how you bruise
easily now.
you step from the surrey of the night,
fringes of unreflected stars, albatross of smoke – you gleam
in the moonshine, plutoid, in the quilted cocoonery
of predawn. you do not weep, and so this reunion
is different than the ones before, and I know
that we will have a dry spring.
as you step, the harelipped poppies split
into moron grins, and the tulips clop
like sheep's bells in the fog, you look at me
and we are strangers.
Thanks guys!
Navita >> You got it -- twelve is an age. And why dramatic? No reason -- completely arbitrary. Thanks for your comments!
talking of michelangelo
outside in the courtyard, someone sells flowers –
blossoms filled with pistils like
the mouths of seamstresses filled with pins. they smell
of chipping paint and quarry stone.
nimbus of pigeons in the courtyard
scrabbling like kitchen noises in the same way they must have
as the Sculptor stood on strutted scaffolding to reach
the ceiling of the chapel, paint egg-speckling his beard, his hands
trembling slightly as his brush pushes versets of blue,
like a lover brushing a loose strand of hair
from the eyes of his darling.
and god reaches out to adam, and between their fingers
grows the gamete of a galaxy, and apostles stand around,
craning their necks, like relatives guessing the sex
of an unborn infant. he painted little wishbones of light
on the inside of their thighs, and in these strokes there is
the secret to all things beautiful and simple, a chromatic
proof of godhood.
raphael's tapestries rustle like an unbuttoned blouse –
assumptions and the flimsy hands of pale saints
shiver in the saucered light of the april morning.
the Sculptor must have yearned for something
more solid under his hands – a granite hip, a marble torso –
as a sailor longs for
the glissando and glottal stop of the ocean, but instead
he paints in local constellations. he painted adam's ten
first edition toes, around him
the chapel hollow-feeling, like a bone
before a drop in barometric pressure.
he worked by candlelight, stubs purled, their flames
little mea cupla's, nodding sibyls. now, we all look up,
and see the weather pattern of heaven, of three hundred
oil-based souls, and our necks ache as his did.
--
This is not really a poem. But sort of.
peter
Aperture snipping shut like scissors around the last umbilical cord of evening light, shutters folding wings, the arthropodic rattle and shuttle of the old Minaulta camera, as I shoot a picture of the man on the pier. He is at least seventy years old, Greek, body ravaged and sickled by age and hard work, except for his eyes which stare down the lens of the camera with the same confidence and expectancy as they might have had fifty years before, stepping off the pilgrim boats from Smyrna. His skin is daubed and raised and calicoed with sun and liver spots like the surface of some impressionistic painting. His white hair plastered to his head, hat held in his hands, chewing tobacco, proud of the way he smells of Red Man leaf and the quiet, cursive rot of the eastern sea-board.
That's great, I say. I take another picture. He grins and his teeth are stained by coffee, leaking from under his gums like rust from oxidizing washers. He tells me that he is also proud of his teeth. He has lost one for every woman he has loved. He is missing seven teeth. The Minaulta spasms, capturing the upside-down negative of the man by the pier, as insubstantial as the feeling of being watched.
He points to a missing tooth.
This one, this one was my favorite. Second cousin from Crete. Nipples like pomegranates. Could move each of her toes on its own. Can you do that? I cannot.
The clouds are bruised where they lay, like corpses purpled by liver mortis and seagulls cry revelations above us, drawn across the sky like nightchains. It has been a long time since I was last beside the ocean. I am almost out of film. I want to take pictures of the lighthouses.
Get some good photos?
Yes sir. Thanks a million.
He offers to take me out on his fishingboat, but the sea is rough this morning, waves heaving, bell-gutted buoys clanging like death carts. I shake my head and his hand. The boat he walks to is outfitted with sails that sag like old neck skin. I want to name him Peter. He is waiting for Christ – there is a crufix around his neck. He is waiting for someone to walk along the pier and beckon and make him something more than he has always been.
But I am just a man with a camera, and there is nothing else in sight but the tattery of gulls.
*gasps*
.
Why have I only just found this?
carnival
Only one thing really struck me as amazingly different about this (other than the magical vocabulary of yours) - I imagine a carnival as fast, chaotic, crazy, colourful and just insane. However, the tone and pace of the poem are slow, laid back, lazy, even. Lines like 'we watch...sails loose...rock gently...' couple with the the exact areas where there are line breaks make the poem lilt, as if the narrator is watching the carnival almost in drowsy contemplation of the whole place, as opposed to them being actively involved in it. Just a thought, that's all. Don't know if that was unintentional or not.
lower table rock
Mountain climbing - one of my favourite pasttimes. And that's such a pure and powerful feeling - of seeing the whole earth laid out in front (or behind) you, seeing it as a whole, and also noticing each and every part, each tiny detail. This poem was mostly intimate, cute with its word choice, and it almost seemed to me like you were trying to distract us the whole time with the 'Look here! Look at this!' kind of gumdrop imagery in order to divert our attention away from the vastness, the frightening expanse of the landscape. But at the same time, this wonderfully personal experience is made somewhat less personal, less intimate with the mentions of battle and the history behind the place. Almost as if you are stopping us from getting too wrapped up in the imagery by throwing in some lines that make it seem like someone's already been there, seen that. Again, an interesting effect.
national geographic
Haha, here's another thought: I am reading about reading here. Describing foreign lands, landscapes - this is you at your most creative, I'd say. There are some alarmingly grabbing images: 'men skinny...I turn the page - a volcano erupts in asia...running his fingers over a scalped egyptian hieroglyph' - I mean, scalped, of all the words! And...you know this, but I thought I should mention anyway: I want the imagery to linger there in my mind; I want there to be something to tie it there in the future, to concrete the words in some way. I see, I touch, I smell, hear, taste when I read these but...I guess that's a paradox of poetry and of human experience itself - unless there is a centre point and a focus, it's difficult to remember. And, my god would it be lovely to remember these, no question about that.
twelve
I wondered what the title meant, reading this. In fact, on second read, I am still curious - hey! There's a bit of intellectual stimluation! (YAY.) Is twelve the first word of the poem? A reference to a time (midday or midnight - though I see little hint of that in the poem) or perhaps an age? 'I am sorry I didn't have longer to appreciate them' - yes, I like this. A confession, when so often the imagery acts as a beautiful distraction. But then, after that line, there is so much wondrous imagery to lose oneself in that it's easy to forget the fundamental question that line raised in the first place: why? 'Fifrelies glowing like isotopes' is a personal favourite there...and, far from strongly wanting to know the circumstances behind which the narrator is 'sorry,' I find it does not matter much, in the grand scheme of things. They're enjoying themselves, and...I guess I will too.
Anyway, thank you for starting up a thread! I wonder though...why dramatic? Just curious
Dear Kylan. I have been away from the site for a while, and as such, have not read any of your poetry during that time. Lo and behold, I come back to find that you're writing just as brilliantly as ever. If no one's ever told you before, keep it up! And if they have, well, good, lol.
I love the number of near-rhymes in this stanza, and I love the huge variety of directions that references and images come from, but that they all fit together so nicely (e.g., rain, fire department, speech impediments).
That said, the Biblical references make me narrow my eyes and nervously say "where's he going with this?" I also found the following stanza really strange. It makes me feel like I'm in a time warp (probably because of the constant juxtaposition between pastoral and mechanical):
Thanks Kamas!
twelve
gethsemane of poppies, ruined by
the heavy summer rain, and weeping ventricled petals –
I am sorry that I didn't have longer to appreciate them.
lasting into july, they would usually douse the evening
sunlight like a fire department, and keep bees
in their mouths far into august
like childhood speech impediments.
the whole summer smells of lambswool
and diesel. it is my first summer in 4H, and I shear
the suffolk's yellowed shag with an oil-mandibled
set of electric clippers, little bales of wool blowing
on the warm milky breath of june wind and the lamb shuddering
with each human
touch.
in the back of the pickup truck, with august
brethren, I close my eyes to keep out the gnats and
blowing seed husks of hay from the floor of the truck bed.
the willowtrees lean and stretch over the roadside barbed wire,
white-limbed, like girls before plié. the cow pastures seep,
the houses shrug against the hillsides in the heat –
cattle gather at the pondsides, which are shallow
as headprints in a morning pillow.
and on sunday evenings we drive
up the mountains, windows rolled down,
fireflies glowing like isotopes – we climb
above the treeline, until we can see out into the basin
of the valley, which is filled with smoke
from the box fires out of happy camp. we build bonfires which
are undone, branch by branch
by the fire like a wedding corset
undone latch by latch to reveal the coals
of a cool belly.
stars rattle in the tin begging cup
of the night, and oberon plays with our earlobes.
:O You get to be my first critique with 5 stars. Anyways to work:
Carnival
I don't feel the link between the depression glass and the water is extended to its full potential. But I do like the way it ties back to the "carnival" whether that was intentional or not. Overall, I don't feel as attached to this poem as I usually am with your longer stuff. You don't envelop your purpose around our brain at this point. It's a little weak, and cut off short but I can appreciate the sweet, summery imagery. Not going into too much detail as I do want to have time to get to the rest.
Lower table rock
Now this one is lovely. I quite enjoyed the underlying tone and really fresh imagery.
I thought belljar and ulnas were both very clever ways of describing the individual images. Though I believe "belljar" is two words.
I'm not as fond of the image of the conqueror. It's a lot harsher of an image, in contrast to the softer, more subtle ones used to describe the scene. Though it could work to create a contrast, it seems as if it was plopped down in that middle of that stanza because it may add something. It's too blunt, forward and less thought through then the rest.
This one is a little more bland then the others. It doesn't really communicate much to the reader. It's sort of there for pleasure. The imagery is sweet, and the reader can feel it. But it doesn't have an individual feature that makes it pop as it's own stanza with meaning.
Also, I'm not sure if this a typo, "a conch's slip" even if it is. I don't associate slip with a conch very easily. If you said "a conch's lip" it would be a lot easier to make the connection.
Great stanza. It doesn't get much across but it manages to pack a feeling of the people you're describing in a few sentences. I wouldn't be too concerned about capitalizing braves and squaws. It's a rule you have to capitalize your "i"s but you don't and it works well to not put any unnecessary emphasis on those words.
One compliant would be, I'm not sure how Penelope and her suitors play into a poem in relation to indian underlights etc. Maybe do some research on legends that involve weaving. It would make the tone, considerably stronger.
Your ending is quite smooth, not with as much of a bang as I'd hope. But it definitely closes everything off really well.
national geographic
I may or may not be slightly in love with this poem. The concept is clever and so well presented. You address the things we see so commonly in national geographic with such precision. You picked things that stick out in people's minds. It's really fantastic. The language isn't as developed and intertwined in this poem, but those are just some loose ends.
These lines:
Simply fantastic. Lovelovelove it.
Though,
This part is a little weaker, because you quickly start to lose the connections you made by giving it a more homey feel. If you give it more of an exotic taste, it could really work. Compare "grandpa" to a village elder, or something of the sort. It'll keep that intoxicating taste of things that are unfamiliar and foreign.
Job well done.
Kamas
Critique owed. =)
Thanks lily!
Here's some information on Depression glass
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Depression_glass
-Kylan
Ooh, Kylan is here! *waves to Kylan*
CARNIVAL
I really only had one little thing that I pondered over on this and it was with the phrase “depression glass.” What exactly it means, I do not know. But I can’t stop wondering. *wonders*
Otherwise, this is definitely a nice, descriptive piece. It’s not too cluttered with lots of adjectives and that’s always nice to see in a descriptive poem.
LOWER TABLE ROCK
I know that you’re not a big fan of capitalization, but I know that Braves and Squaws are usually capitalized. I’m not sure if you would want to capitalize them in your poem. I’m not sure. I just figured I would mention it.
But the imagery and movement of this poem are priceless and very lovely to read. You really do have a wonderful gift for imagery.
NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC
You know what, I hate you....because you have skizzles. I can’t say anything mean or even criticize a tiny little thing. Your use of words and your knowledge of vocabulary is...well....I had to Google search a lot of the words you used. But still, it was a very intelligent poem!
Congrats!